Single-chip USB Full-Speed bridging; USB-to-I2C & USB-to-UART

February 24, 2016 //
By Graham Prophet

FTDI Chip has advanced its approach that makes USB technology is as straightforward to use as possible. The FT260 is a human interface device (HID) class interface controller IC. It can provide USB 2.0 Full Speed (12Mbps) connectivity to a broad range of application scenarios.

As the entire USB protocol is handled on the chip, the FT260 offering presents engineers with a plug-and-play solution that is simple to incorporate into contemporary embedded system designs. These ICs employ standard class drivers, which means there is no need to install complex vendor-specific drivers. Their flexible IOs mean they are compatible with 1.8V to 3.3V systems. During full operation only 24 mA of current is drawn and this drops to just 385 µA when in suspend mode.

The FT260 is the first device of its kind to be compliant with the HID-over-I2C protocol, as specified by Microsoft with the release of Windows 8. A total of 4 different speed modes can be utilised while in I2C bus - standard mode (SM), fast mode (FM), fast mode plus (FM+) and high speed (HS) with 7-bit addressing supported. The integrated memory resource enables storage of customised USB descriptors. The built-in oscillator PLL dispenses with the need for an external crystal. FT260 has USB battery charger detection mechanism included, so that more efficient charging may be benefitted from. To further assist engineers, this IC will be backed up by a series of board level products.